Nowadays, electronic devices such as mobile phones are widely used and bring convenience to our lives, as such, electronic devices have become a part of modern life. Every electronic device has a chip card such as a SIM (subscriber identification module) card for carrying information necessary for operating the mobile phone. The chip card may also contain personal information for the subscriber, for example, a listing of frequently used telephone numbers. However, it is necessary to provide a chip card retaining mechanism to hold the chip card in the electronic device.
Referring to FIG. 7, a typical chip card retaining mechanism used in a mobile phone is as follows. The chip card retaining mechanism includes a mounting base 80 and a locking element 90. A receiving groove 801 is defined in the mounting base 80 for receiving a chip card. The locking element 90 includes a fixing portion 901, an operating portion 903 and a deformable portion 905. The locking element 90 is mounted on the mounting base 80. The fixing portion 901 protrudes over the receiving groove 801 to hold the chip card. When the operating portion 903 is pulled manually, the deformable portion 905 deforms and the fixing portion 901 moves away from the receiving groove 801, the chip card can thereby be removed from the receiving groove 801 of the mounting base 80.
It can be seen that the deformable portion 905 of the locking element 90 is very large, and a height of the deformable portion 905 will increase when pulling the operating portion 903. Thus, the chip card retaining mechanism occupies too much space, which results in an overly large size for electronic devices such as mobile phones. In addition, when a person is installing or removing the chip card, he or she must hold the mobile phone and operate the locking element 90 with one hand and remove the chip card simultaneously with another hand. That is, the chip card retaining mechanism can be difficult for users to operate. Furthermore, it is necessary to design a large battery cover to cover the chip card retaining mechanism and a battery of the mobile phone due to the retaining mechanism being exposed out of the mounting base 80. Thus, there is no sufficient space in a housing of the mobile phone to arrange other attachments such as a digital camera, speaker and so on.
What is needed, therefore, is a chip card retaining mechanism which overcomes the above-described shortcomings.